It seems to me that some long term commercial value (to L-Soft) can be had by providing a mechanism for hiding owner-selected LIST keywords. I can imagine that large commercial firms could use LISTSERV for hundreds of small, ad hoc committee/working group/team project/board/etc discussion lists. I can imagine that for some of these lists, who is involved, how they are involved, what they are involved in, when they're involved (and dis-involved), is company- and/or project- or committee-sensitive information. Having selective control over dissemination of this information would seem to me to be quite valuable, and would be a commercially valued "feature" of L-Soft's LISTSERV, rather than simply a bother to L-Soft to implement. > Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 02:07:17 +0200 > From: Eric Thomas <[log in to unmask]> > > ... How do you want to archive your list if it doesn't have a > header? > Eric Certainly, some minimal identifying info will have to be present in such an archive/database, or else the choice for that list is (for those who don't want _any_ advertising/searching done on their list) no database/archive. > How is the database filled in, who is the owner, etc? <listname>-Request@wherever and <listname>-Owner might work for the public address; of course, somewhere, there needs to be a map from -Request to the real owner's address (but that one needn't be published/publishable). Seems as a minimum, a list's name@address and the generic -owner/-request addresses need to be available. What other info in LIST _must_ be public in order for LISTSERV to be available to (prospective) subscribers? This discussion is not about the technical feasibility of hiding info; with enough development time and effort, things could be hidden, right? It's about the philosophy of hiding info, and/or about the value (commercial or otherwise) of hiding info. Commercial world hides all sorts of things all the time. So, clearly there is value to some. Will they pay for it? Peter